You might not have been aware but today marks the 135th anniversary of the very first phone call, made by British inventor Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas A. Watson in Boston in 1876.
Bell could never have guessed how his invention would transform our lives. The phones that virtually all of us carry round in our pockets today are far more than just devices to call people – they let us surf the internet and act as our alarm clocks, diaries and address books, amongst other things.
But despite the ubiquity of phones nowadays, our research to mark the telephone’s anniversary found that nearly a quarter of British teenagers don’t know who invented it!
Twenty-two per cent of those aged 16-24 we surveyed didn’t know who Alexander Graham Bell was and 7% of young adults believe that it was Bell – and not fellow Scot John Logie Baird – who invented the television.
Another 6% believe that he recently helped England retain the Ashes in his guise as a professional English cricketer, while a further group of teenagers thought he invented the helicopter, discovered penicillin, or discovered the source of the Nile. A few even said he was the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
While 15% of Brits knew the first words uttered by Bell on the phone on this day in 1876, over half (55%) thought that Bell’s first words on the telephone were “Can you hear me?” instead of the actual line “Mr Watson, come here – I want to see you”. And one per cent of people thought the first call set the tone for many of today’s conversations by starting “Hello? I’m on the train.”
While the research was done as a bit of fun, it was done with a serious intent – to mark a day that changed the shape of communications forever. Last Thursday alone saw 17.2 million calls being made and received on our network, reaffirming the telephone’s place as the primary source of contact in the UK. With the growing popularity of our recently launched mobile phone packages – Mobile Essentials and Mobile Plus – we only expect the number of calls our customers make to grow.
So to celebrate today’s anniversary, we’re holding hourly competitions via our @talktalktips Twitter feed for one day only, testing the nation’s knowledge on Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, with plenty of phone-related prizes – such as TalkTalk landline handsets and a variety of mobile phones – on offer. Check our feed for your chance to win.
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